CHAPTER 16.
I might have told you of the beginning of this liaison in a few lines, but I wanted you to see every step by which we came, I to agree to whatever Marguerite wished, Marguerite to be unable to live apart from me.
It was the day after the evening when she came to see me that I sent her Manon Lescaut.
From that time, seeing that I could not change my mistress's life, I changed my own.

I wished above all not to leave myself time to think over the position I had accepted, for, in spite of myself, it was a great distress to me.

Thus my life, generally so calm, assumed all at once an appearance of noise and disorder.

Never believe, however disinterested the love of a kept woman may be, that it will cost one nothing.

Nothing is so expensive as their caprices, flowers, boxes at the theatre, suppers, days in the country, which one can never refuse to one's mistress.
As I have told you, I had little money.